Aromaticity cyclobutadiene

A more general classification considers the phase of the total electronic wave function [13]. We have treated the case of cyclic polyenes in detail [28,48,49] and showed that for Hiickel systems the ground state may be considered as the combination of two Kekule structures. If the number of electron pairs in the system is odd, the ground state is the in-phase combination, and the system is aromatic. If the number of electron pairs is even (as in cyclobutadiene, pentalene, etc.), the ground state is the out-of-phase combination, and the system is antiaromatic. These ideas are in line with previous work on specific systems [40,50]. 

In addition to benzene and naphthalene derivatives, heteroaromatic compounds such as ferrocene[232, furan, thiophene, selenophene[233,234], and cyclobutadiene iron carbonyl complexpSS] react with alkenes to give vinyl heterocydes. The ease of the reaction of styrene with sub.stituted benzenes to give stilbene derivatives 260 increases in the order benzene < naphthalene < ferrocene < furan. The effect of substituents in this reaction is similar to that in the electrophilic aromatic substitution reactions[236]. 

Cyclobutadiene escaped chemical charactenzation for more than 100 years Despite numerous attempts all synthetic efforts met with failure It became apparent not only that cyclobutadiene was not aromatic but that it was exceedingly unstable Beginning m the 1950s a variety of novel techniques succeeded m generating cyclobutadiene as a transient reactive intermediate... 

Thus cyclobutadiene like cyclooctatetraene is not aromatic More than this cyclo butadiene is even less stable than its Lewis structure would suggest It belongs to a class of compounds called antiaromatic An antiaromatic compound is one that is destabi lized by cyclic conjugation... 

One of molecular orbital theories early successes came m 1931 when Erich Huckel dis covered an interesting pattern m the tt orbital energy levels of benzene cyclobutadiene and cyclooctatetraene By limiting his analysis to monocyclic conjugated polyenes and restricting the structures to planar geometries Huckel found that whether a hydrocarbon of this type was aromatic depended on its number of tt electrons He set forth what we now call Huckel s rule... 

Benzene cyclobutadiene and cyclooctatetraene provide clear examples of Huckel s rule Benzene with six tt electrons is a An + 2) system and is predicted to be aromatic by the rule Square cyclobutadiene and planar cyclooctatetraene are An systems with four and eight tt electrons respectively and are antiaromatic... 

Section 11 18 Although cychc conjugation is a necessary requirement for aromaticity this alone is not sufficient If it were cyclobutadiene and cycloocta tetraene would be aromatic They are not... 

Section 11 19 An additional requirement for aromaticity is that the number of rr elec Irons m conjugated planar monocyclic species must be equal to An + 2 where n is an integer This is called Huckel s rule Benzene with six TT electrons satisfies Huckel s rule for n = 1 Square cyclobutadiene (four TT electrons) and planar cyclooctatetraene (eight rr electrons) do not Both are examples of systems with An rr electrons and are antiaromatic... 

The pattern of orbital energies in Figure 11.13 provides a convincing explanation for why benzene is aromatic while square cyclobutadiene and planar- cyclooctatetraene are not. We start by counting tt electrons cyclobutadiene has four, benzene six, and cyclooctatetraene has eight. These tt electrons are assigned to MOs in accordance with the usual rules—lowest energy orbitals first, a maximum of two electrons per orbital. 

Cyclo butadiene is highly reactive and shows none of the properties associated with aromaticity. In fact, it was not even prepared until 1965, when Rowland Pettit of the University of Texas was able to make it at low temperature. Even at —78 °C, however, cyclobutadiene is so reactive that it dimerizes by a Diels-Alder reaction. One molecule behaves as a diene and the other as a dienophile. 

The most obvious compound in which to look for a closed loop of four electrons is cyclobutadiene (52). Hiickel s rule predicts no aromatic character here, since 4 is not a number of the form 4 + 2. There is a long history of attempts to prepare this... 

It is clear that simple cyclobutadienes, which could easily adopt a square planar shape if that would result in aromatic stabilization, do not in fact do so and are not aromatic. The high reactivity of these compounds is not caused merely by steric strain, since the strain should be no greater than that of simple cyclopropenes, which are known compounds. It is probably caused by antiaromaticity. ... 

The unfused cyclobutadiene system is stable in complexes with metals (see Chapter 3), but in these cases electron density is withdrawn from the ring by the metal and there is no aromatic quartet. In fact, these cyclobutadiene-metal complexes can be looked upon as systems containing an aromatic duet. The ring is square planar, the compounds undergo aromatic substitution, and NMR spectra of monosubstituted derivatives show that the C-2 and C-4 protons are equivalent. ... 

Antiaromatic molecules are kinetically unstable, and aromatic molecules are kinetically stable (Scheme 13). In cyclobutadiene, the n orbitals can be combined out of phase and the n orbitals can be combined in phase. Cyclobutadiene is kinetically unstable toward electron donors and acceptors. In benzene, all neighboring pairs of n orbitals cannot be combined out of phase, and all neighboring pairs of 71 orbitals cannot be combined in phase. Benzene is kinetically stable toward donors and acceptors. 

The kinetic stabilities and the donor-acceptor properties of cyclic conjugated molecules [68] have been described (Scheme 12) in the theoretical subsection (Sect. 2.2.2) to be controlled by the phase property. There is a parallelism between the thermodynamic and kinetic stabilities. An aromatic molecule, benzene, is kinetically stable, and an antiaromatic molecule, cyclobutadiene, is kinetically unstable (Scheme 13). 

Catenated Organic Compounds of the Group IV Elements, 4,1 Conjugate Addition of Grignard Reagents to Aromatic Systems, 1, 221 Cyclobutadiene Metal Complexes, 4, 95 Cyclopentadienyl Metal Compounds, 2, 365 Diene-Iron Carbonyl Complexes, 1, 1... 

In contrast to 69 Li, which was formulated above as the bji-electron aromatic compound, other representatives of this class of cyclic compounds, the heavy analogs of cyclobutadiene dianion, were found to be nonaromatic. The two compounds of this type, disiladigermacyclobutadiene dianion 71 K2 and tetrasilacyclobutadiene dianion 72 K2, were synthesized by the reductive dehalogenation of the corresponding precursors 73 and 74 " with KCg (Scheme 2.61)... 

Secondly, the carbon framework holding the exocyclic double bonds could be extended. This is demonstrated by naphtharadialene 5, a highly reactive intermediate which has been generated by thermal dehydrochlorination from either the tetrachloride 178 or its isomer 179106. Radialene 5 has not been detected as such in these eliminations rather, its temporary formation was inferred from the isolation of the thermolysis product 180 which was isolated in 15% yield (equation 25). Formally, 5 may also be regarded as an [8]radialene into whose center an ethylene unit has been inserted. In principle, other center units—cyclobutadiene, suitable aromatic systems—may be introduced in this manner, thus generating a plethora of novel radialene structures. 

Since antiaromaticity is related to aromaticity, it should be defined by many of the same criteria (31). That is, antiaromatic species should be less stable in comparison to a localized reference system, should demonstrate paratropic shifts in the H NMR spectrum, should have positive NICS values, and positive values of magnetic susceptibility exaltation, A. While the presence of enhanced bond length alternation has been considered as evidence of antiaromaticity (31), the deformation of square cyclobutadiene to rectangular cyclobutadiene to reduce its antiaromaticity suggests that the lack of bond length alternation is also a characteristic of antiaromatic compounds. 

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